ORIGIN

((This is set one week ago from 10/25/2020, so 10/18/2020 with consent of Dark! Now lets party!))

Nemo

He'd gone looking for Giggle, after a time.

Head feathers dyed blue, nest partially constructed in an odd corner of the cave, with some now wilted leaves woven in and drying in the draining heat coming from Tunnel P, he's got... almost everything he'd been looking for, right?

A place and some people to belong to, his magic is filling out little by little, he found what his instincts and mind were itching for even though he didn't have a name for it... and yet it feels like he's still missing something big. He wants to get involved with this family, his ... wow, wait, can he even call them friends? He's just been haunting the edges of Canis for several cycles...

After this, he needs to take a deep breath and screw his courage to a sticking place.

Because, he thinks, approaching Giggle's bone pit on foot, looking every bit as distressed as he feels mentally, what with his chest feathers still dust grey and his blue feathers groomed un-even in both color and fluff, Quite frankly, Giggle is terrifying. I need to know I'm not an annoyance, for my sanity's sake... and I want her blessing to approach everyone else here. She's the matriarch... she'll know. Right?

@Giggle

Giggle was, by a stroke of luck, actually at her bone pit--and actually awake. She lay half-aware at the lip of the ledge that overhung and overlooked it, dark eyes peering down into the pit.

Her thoughts were a long string of pondering, weighing this and that, considering possibilities. It was a half-meditative state, nearer perhaps to dreaming than to consciousness, but when the lammergeier approached, her awareness snapped back to.

It was a dizzying moment--a deja vu, disconcerting and disorienting, where her head swam and her memories flared. It was like looking up and seeing something that should not have been, as though she'd stepped years back into the past.

Aza'zel, her stunned mind whispered, and then the present came rushing back.

His fall. Eythan. The long period of his aching absence. The raw pain of his loss. How could it be so sharp--so new--when it had been so long..? It felt as though her heart were twisting inside her chest.

Giggle's dark eyes blinked, and she pulled up a little straighter, silently focusing on giving the arrival the attention that he deserved--rather than her own babbling, confused grief. Blue feathers, she told herself. She knew that Nemo just... looked like her old King, her old friend, but it had still been unexpected, his arrival unannounced.

"Nemo, is it?" she called down, hoping to the bones that he would not look up, and announce himself in Aza'zel's voice as a long-lost friend.

Or would that be so bad-? Even if it meant she were to join him... would that be so bad?

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

@Nemo

Nemo

Looking left, then right, then - finally - up, as Giggle called out to him, and he twists his head to do so, bright red eyes in deep berry blue, and then his odd green bloodstone clearly visible from her vantage point above him. He greets her with his usual beakish smile, eyes crinkling in happiness as he spots the hyena up on a perch, like a sensible individual... honestly, it seems he's to only one afraid of heights in the caves, today.

"Ah- ah, yeah, I'm Nemo! Hellooo, m'am!" he draws out his greeting as he waves his left wing at her, his movement sending his glowing bauble dancing across his chest, and he has to self consciously stop it at he feels the now-familiar sensation across his breastbone. Nemo isn't entirely sure if he has to call her by her title, or her name... so just an honorific seems good for now, right? "I'm not interrupting a good nap, am I?" His tail flicks back and forth, stirring up a bit of dust, and he has to break eye contact to look around, look at the nearby mushrooms and the glowing ones scattered about her den.

These are cute, he thinks almost absently, feathers flattening slightly from his earlier anxieties, and... feeling a bit better about this whole thing. That is, until-

Oh dear, should I have brought food?

@Giggle

Even where his stone lies, she thought absently. The bird seemed almost a water-shaded mirror of Aza'zel. She shook the thought away and pushed up, shaking herself out--dander flinging every which way. She started to make her way down to Nemo, a slow lope, unhurried.

"I don't think you've visited me here before--or have you?" she asked, dark eyes flicking up to regard him as she approached. Her tone was friendly enough, casual, nothing formal or ominous about her. "What can I do for you today?" This, too, held the tone of open offering, curious, and her eyes strayed--as she came to a halt--to the baubled gemstone.

She didn't comment on it, but in the back of her mind, she was approving; everyone should carry a light for when the world went into darkness.

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

@Nemo

Nemo

If only Nemo knew who she was thinking about- he'd honestly be a little flattered, and mostly sad. Losing someone is hard, and being reminded of them every day would only be harder, he would assume. But to remind someone they love of them is.. also a sort of mild comfort, at least a little. Right?

Anyway, back to what's actually going through the featherbrain's mind.

As she draws closer, he focuses on her again and does his little beaky smile, tucking his head down and opening his beak to make it seem like he's grinning at her. "I uh, have not- I've been kid of pre-occupied with some little things, nothing big," he offers a small and dismissive wave of his right wing, like brushing away what he'd been up to. "I only recently found a kind of blue I like for my feathers."

A deep inhale, and he goes to reply to her question, and he blinks at her from his oddly tilted vantage point, head still bowed with his chin close to offer the grin, now gone as he speaks. "I honestly came to ask some questions- nothing too heavy, I hope. I just... have a lot of them, have for a long time, and since you seem ... very practical and well-respected, I assumed you'd be the best to ask them." His left wing folds in to rub at his bauble, almost like an anxious tick of his as he lets one of the longer edges of the gem fit into the joint.

@Giggle

Dark eyes ranged over the dyed feathers as he mentioned them, taking them in with an honest appraisal. "The blue suits you. It looks good," she offered, after a moment, in a sort of offhand praise. Rounded ears pressed forward to listen to the rest, and she felt warmed: so few came to ask her genuine advice, these days, and she wasn't sure she was worthy of that kind of thing. She didn't see herself as higher or better than other Gembound, anyway.

She waited until Nemo had finished speaking, before giving a little self-deprecating laugh--but there was genuine humor in it. She'd already turned away, moving to flop at the side of the pit, casually. "Sure; I'd be happy to answer whatever I can, offer advice--and no, you weren't interrupting a nap, it's fine. But I'm not any... Well, if there's anything I can't answer I'll let you know, yeah? I don't have all the answers, or anything. I mean, I'm not a-..." Was there a word for a repository of answers? A place someone came to get them? She might've said "oracle" but she sort of was one of those, what with the fortune-telling and all.

She offered Nemo a hyena sort of grin, a relaxed expression with a back-flick of her ears. "I'm not better or that much older than everyone else, but I'd be happy to share my experience, I mean. Ask away," she added, good-natured and easygoing; "-as many questions as you want. Heavy, or not."

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

@Nemo

Nemo

The lammergeier preens under the compliment, a soft "Thank you,", feeling her gaze actually look him over before giving her opinion on his odd coloring. Yes, he's aware it's odd, but he really likes it, at least he likes the color more than his anxiety dislikes the possibilities. The self depreciating laugh, though, makes him tilt his head and furrow his brows as best he can in concern, some feathers ruffling along his face as he shuffles after her a tad, before taking his own seat a few solid paces away from the spot where Giggle had chosen to lay.

"I'm glad I didn't interrupt anything.... and I understand that everyone has their limits. But you have experiences I don't, both good and.... not so good." a small shuffle as he gets a bit more comfortable, a few ruffled feathers before he continues, "Or at least, I'm assuming that. Since we live different kinds of lives and all. I mean," here, its his turn to offer a self depreciating laugh, but it honestly has a healthy dose of humor in it, "You don't seem like the type to think you can tame a force of the elements right out of the chrysalis." A shake of his head, and another laugh as he remembers the fun he had telling that story to someone else- but this isn't supposed to be about that.

He takes a deep breath, then, looking around, seeking out the nearby mushroom lights with his gaze, and meeting the forever staring gaze of any nearby skulls in the process, before he decides to start with something... straightforward. "Everyone here calls you The Seer. Can I ask why?" It's going to take him a bit to feel... like he's not annoying.

@Giggle

"'Not so good!'" she echoed, and burst into a loud and ringing cackle, if a mercifully short one. "A good assumption, Nemo; you've got no idea. I've seen some shit," she added, settling into a flopped position on the stone, easygoing. Her demeanor seemed casual, even welcoming, her words perhaps a little brash--a little open--but honest, at least.

"As for 'seer'--Bonereader, Bonecaster, all that--it's because I see. I can do my best to explain that, if you like; the long and short of it is that... everything is connected, consequence and cause and effect and threads of magic through reality, and some can learn to read that. To see into the past--and into the future. And to see into others' minds, when I need to," she explained.

For a moment, the hyena fidged, her silence somewhat abrupt, as if she were trying to decide how much detail to go into, here. After a long moment she settled on something quieter than before, something simple. "I've seen a lot of things others haven't. Or... things not everyone has seen."

"As for--what, taming magic?--straight out the chrysalis... All I did on hatching was jump on the first Gembound I saw looking for food." She offered a good-natured grin, and then--realizing how that might be interprested--hastily added, "He wound up my best friend, but there wasn't a whole lotta 'magic' in my first few days, no. So what sorts of things do you want to ask me?" Giggle went on, head canting a little to one side as she eyed the lammergeier. "Was it Seeing-related, or just sort of... advice?"

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

@Nemo

Nemo

The sudden bust of a cackle had him rapidly blinking, trying not to fluff up in alarm and deciding that this... isn't a happy laugh shortly before the hyena speaks. No idea huh... that's... kind of comforting? I don't know a lot. I'm glad that whatever that was is gone, though. Right?

The lammergeier bobs up and down as he listens to her describe her abilities, and he pauses mid bob to stare at her, the idea that everything being connected giving him a quite literal pause. Nemo does look a bit concerned when she says she can see into his mind, but its mainly cause he worries if she ever has had that backfire on her like his magic does, and how much that might... hurt...

Ow.

The blue lammergeier barely registers the pause as he stews in his own thoughts for a moment as well, but he manages to zone back in as she continues speaking, feeling like she's hiding something much... darker and destructive than the winds in Monoceros, if it's enough to draw her personality in and make her quiet.

A snort is what makes it's way put of his beak, though, almost in surprise as he remembers the other hyena he'd bumped into, and attempting to imagine a similarly gangly Giggle trying to bounce on a blurry Gembound in the distance. "Food I can get, understandable mistake. I was nothing but feathers and ego when I popped out." Nemo offers this as he chuckles, but his mirth slowly simmers down as she continues on and mentions making friends with the Gembound she had come upon.... and he misses Glory for one sharp second.

But, those emotions go in the box in the corner, and so he shoves that away and tries to consider what he really wanted to ask her. "I have... a lot of questions. Really. But I will keep this short, I've been told that I can talk anyone's ear off if I don't pay attention." He huffs out an amused half laugh, and takes a deep inhale. "I guess I'll... start kind of simple? You guys are a ... family, right? I don't know if its just me, or just being in Canis too long... but my magic is feeling kind of different. Does that have to do with ... joining you guys?"

Nemo's use of the word family is almost childlike in the fragile way he offers it up, like he's not really sure what it means other than something happy and warm.

@Giggle

Giggle snorted with amusement.

"Talk my head off as much as you want. Honestly, I don't get nearly enough visitors," she chuckled. Round ears then swept forward, Giggle listening with contented silence as Nemo spoke.

She almost responded to his question, at first, with simple dismissal--a "no, I haven't noticed?" and confusion--but she paused to think about it, first. She hadn't really considered it before, but hadn't her abilities to read the deaths of bones come about only fairly recently? Not that other magics hadn't, as well, but other Bonebound had gained the same ability at almost the same time. Was it some shared form of magic-?

Brow furrowed over dark eyes as she looked to Nemo.

"Well... my magic doesn't feel different, exactly, and I'm always learning new things. But I think a few of us, now that you mention it, did start to learn a new magic at about the same time? Is it--something specific? I mean, ahh. When I touch bones, now, I can see the death of their owner. Well. Previous owner. Can you do that, too, or do you mean something else?" She lay content, and didn't think to answer the "family" question; she assumed it was rhetorical.

Sure, they were family; and Nemo was one of them.

And she liked the little guy, too.

rain stock: D Sharon Pruitt wiki commons; hyena Benjamin Hollis on flickr

@Nemo